Being “Other”

“I, too, feel different in the world I live in. Most girls my age are married and have children. I don’t have either. It’s hard feeling you belong to a group of friends when everyone is different in that regard. I feel as though I’m the black person living in a world of white people.”

I spend so much time thinking about black and white that I forget there are so many other colors out there, more specifically so many different ways to feel like you’re an outsider in a world where it seems as if everyone else is inside. As a society we make it pretty plain that there are norms, and anything outside of the norm is to be ostracized. WE should feel embarrassed when we don’t fit neatly into the boxes crafted for us. WE should think less of ourselves for being “other.”

In turn WE convince ourselves that they’re right, that we should feel sorry for ourselves, that we aren’t normal. We look behind our backs at others who are whispering and we assume they must be whispering about us. And it’s not our faults that we’ve been programmed this way. After all, we’re only human. But just because we understand that we’ve been conditioned doesn’t make it any easier to live in this world.

Women are still expected to settle down at some point, to decided on a mate and have kids. In fact, even professional women are prejudiced against because they have ovaries and ticking biological clocks, getting passed over for promotions in fear that they will at one point be gone on maternity leave.

Once the kids do arrive these new mothers are expected to put everything else they love and appreciate about themselves on the back burner because the kid is supposed to completely dominate their lives now. They are mother. Hear them roar. In the opposite respect, men aren’t expected to drop their own personal identity when they become fathers. It’s this pressure (and double standard) that makes women feel inadequate in their own world, to feel deprived of their own individual selves.

And, you know, even if as a woman you don’t want that life, if you’re not interested in settling down and having kids, you’re made to feel bad about yourself for having different goals for your life. That’s when it’s time to search yourself. Do you really want all of that for you, or do you want it because you want to fit in? Do you want it so you won’t feel judged by women who are insecure with themselves and with their own place in society, who need validation by following prescribed paths for females?

It’s not black and white, either, which is the real problem. It’s not like being a black person living in a world of white people. It’s really like being a deaf person in the midst of people who are blind. We all have our insecurities. We all want to fit in with others, to have a place where we feel safe and loved for who we are. It’s just hard to figure it all out, especially when we don’t fit the norm for wherever we are, or for our society as a whole. And the baggage we carry along with us is getting heavier by the year.

Perhaps it’s time we shut our eyes and pretend we are blind. Maybe then we might be able to focus on what we really want, on what will make us whole.